Pretty girl or riot nerd?
About a year ago I worked for one of the biggest sites on the interwebz which targets a demographic group of kids between nine and seventeen years, handling their costumer support for a couple of weeks. What I thought would be a mind numbing 9-5 job to pay the rent between semesters at Uni, turned out to be a really thrilling and interesting insight into youth culture today. After a year spent writing academic essays on cultural studies, mostly about subculture and its connection to feminism and DIY, I realised that this was a gold mine for anyone interested in girl culture.
The site caters to the idolising, fame seeking, and brand loving youngster and most of the users are girls, from all over the world. It is a mix between a game based around paper dolls and a social community where the users can chat, communicate in groups and discuss their favourite clothing brands, pop icons or basically anything. The paper doll part consists of, on the one hand, pre-made dolls and clothes based on real celebrities ranging from Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears to Kurt Cobain and Joan of Arc, and on the other your own “Me doll”, your alter ego or avatar on the site which you can make up to look exactly as you want when it comes so size, skin colour, eyes, clothes, make up, hair style and so on (as long as you keep within the socially acceptable frames that limits your choices – for example when it comes to body shape/size). It is free to sign up for an ordinary account, but to get the good stuff – buying the nicest outfits, participate in the best competitions or getting your little paws on the coolest eyeliner – you have to pay for a monthly membership and also use your parents Visa card to buy the artificial currency that is used on the site. It is basically the girl version of World of Warcraft, but instead of pretending to be a druid that uses magical positions to kill monsters you buy cute tops, shiny handbags and pretty scarves from Donna Karen.
What I find interesting about this is the subject position these girls claim for themselves in a milieu that is so connected to the female stereotype of body managing, appearance, keeping busy with making yourself up as a woman/girl, instead of using your energy to fight these stereotypes and demands. Stuff that little girls like – ponies, glitter make up, pretty dresses, boy bands, and playing dress up – are seen as cute, unimportant, commercialised and utterly harmless to society. Or as Polly Styrene, the grandmother of punk, puts it; “some people think little girls should be seen, not heard”. Being a girl is not something to be really proud of; the negative connotations of running, screaming or crying like a girl is not just expressions without meaning, they actually say something about the way we regard girls. Also, girl culture is often looked upon from a sort of “non-culture” angle; that it is just looks, an image or fad that young girls adopt one week and discard the next in favour of something new and hip. This in contrast to boy culture, or proper subculture, who is seen as lived culture where age, gender and staying true to the scene are important factors that make up cool.
I myself had (and still have) my doubts and critical thoughts about this kind of gendered, commercial marketing, targeting kids and dragging them into the consumer culture lifestyle. But spending my days answering questions from the sites users and dealing with abuse reports from its community, I discovered something that I hadn’t thought of earlier. It was what I like to call the seedy underbelly of girls, the scheming, lying, bribing, name calling, stealing, hoaxing and cheating that is raging on the site. All the things that good girls don’t do. And all this in a hyper commercialised environment, centred around looks, clothes, accessories, fame, pop culture and branding.
There are young girls coming together, creating a space and culture of their own within a pre-packaged environment, turning it into a arena of pre-teen queens forming secret gangs and cliques, using their html skills to set up mirror sites for stealing passwords, making up new personas, lying, cheating and essentially not being nice. In an odd sort of way, I found this very liberating and, well… fun. Of course I realise that little girls calling each other stuff like “you stupid crack whore” and stealing money from others isn’t a good thing. But I like the fact that this shows that they are agents in their own life, they’re not pretty dolls that just play dress up and sit quiet in a corner. Coming from a teen hood where I myself found feminism through the angry screams of the riot grrrls, a punk phenomena reclaiming the girl as something powerful, good, subversive and bursting with rage, I wish that a society that’s started to regard boy nerd culture (like WoW) as proof of creative modern youth culture, could do the same here. I think that’s what I’m trying to mirror in this cross stitch – the mash up of cuteness, cuddly cats and pastel colours together with a “I don’t owe you anything” attitude that creates its own rules and at the same time, on some level, re-thinks the whole concept of being girly.
Of course I got the quote from a Bikini Kill song.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Feminism, Geek stuff, Media, xstitch
9 Responses to “Pretty girl or riot nerd?”
Leave a Reply
On the interwebs
Buy Radical Cross Stitch Stuff
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by radicalxstitch, Cross Stitcher. Cross Stitcher said: Pretty girl or riot nerd? – Seriously Seditious Stitching: I think that's what I'm trying to mirror in this cross … http://bit.ly/ayo67x [...]
Interesting post! I’m attracted to the kind of punk side of this that takes something girly & so cute it could be nauseating & turns it around, giving it a new meaning. There are things that I am not attracted to, just as there was a side of punk that was not exactly intellectual. A really interesting look into the “youth of today.”
Shelley´s last [type] ..Favorite Things Week 3- 4 & 5
Thank’s I’m glad you liked it. Took me some time to get my thinking straight and sort of get to the point.
I adore the embroidery, but your description of girl culture online sounds like Desperate Housewives to me. Surely a culture dedicate to shiny handbags should have some space for critical empowerment with the world? I’m not surprised they’re all bitching and scheming – it’s the lowest form of empowerment in lipstick world. However, if they go on to be lipstick hackers – well that would be interesting.
Fascinating stuff.
I’m new around here and have to ask, though it might be in an FAQ somewhere (please forgive me if it is – I did look!). Where can I get a pattern for the piece shown at the head of the article? It’s great!
Cynthia Armistead´s last [type] ..Book Review- The Horns of Elfland edited by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman
Ele: I haven’t watched s full episode of Desperate Housewifes, so that comparison might me right but I don’t know. What I was trying to get at was that my own preconcieved ideas about what this site ment to it’s users and what they did with the tools provided seemed to be a bit to rigid.
Cynthia: Take a look at the Radical Cross Stitch DIY page at the top of the page, there you’ll find helpful tips to get you started with cross stitching. We’re working on a free pattern page, but it’s not really there yet, and I actually bought the pattern for this one in a craft store. DMC sells Hello Kitty cross stitch kits, take a look here: http://www.dmc.com/majic/pageServer/010100023z/en/Hello-Kitty-cross-stitch-kits.html. And I think that if you google a bit, you might find some free patterns on the internt.
johanna´s last [type] ..BECAUSE I believe with my wholeheartmindbody that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can- and will change the world for real
[...] There’s a story behind this stitch. Read more about it from the creator herself here. [...]
To me this illustrates why I ID as feme and the otherness experienced by every Queer. I have some traditional female interests but heaven help the person who tries to cast me in a traditional role.
(Ok once more with feeling…used the audio code this time)
Anita Morris´s last [type] ..My first freeform embroidery
[...] saw this cross-stitch and was reminded Oh right, I love Bikini Kill! So I packed Kris’s iPod with riot grrrl and [...]